Digital information can be provided with a digital signature, in order to attest to the integrity of the digital information. To provide a digital signature, a conventional digital signature technique generates a digital signature corresponding to a particular document, software, or other digital information, by using a private key. A recipient of the digital information with the digital signature can check the digital signature against a public key to determine whether the digital signature is valid. In addition, the digital signature may assist in detection of any alteration of the digital information which occurred.
Digital signatures can be relied on by various processes, such as secure boot loaders, run time security checks, and secure install functions. For example, before allowing software to be installed or executed on a processor, the digital signature can be checked in order to authenticate and validate the software.
A particular private key and a corresponding public key are referred to as a “key pair”. The public key can be provided to as many users as desired, so that a particular digital signature can be verified. The corresponding private key to be utilized in creating the digital signature is kept private. Hence, maintaining confidentiality of the private key is imperative for maintaining integrity.